Feb 29 - Face Frames Gallery To Hold Female Artists Exhibition For International Women's Day
Face Frames Gallery will be holding its first ever women-only exhibition next week to celebrate International Women’s Day.
The exhibition will launch on Tuesday 8th March from 6.30pm onwards, and will feature paintings, photographs, sculptures and tapestries from female artists of all ages.
After having received more than 80 pieces of work from more than 40 female artists in Gibraltar, exhibition curator Louisa Rhodes and gallery owner Sebastian Rodriguez spoke to YGTV about the upcoming exhibition.
Titled “Celebrating Women’s Art Exhibition for International Women’s Day”, it will kick off at 6.30pm with an entry fee of £1, which will go towards the local charity Women in Need.
What is this exhibition about?
Louisa: It’s about celebrating local female artists, specifically ones that may not have been exhibited before, and what’s been lovely about it has been the reaction we are getting from people. It’s given a real confidence boost to people who may not normally exhibit their work. This exhibition is really about redressing the balance that there is a bit of an inequality in the number of female artists exhibited across the world, so the idea was to run a female-only exhibition in support of International Women’s Day.
Sebastian: For me, it was about promoting visual arts, and this is one thing that Louisa and I spoke about. Visual arts as an art form is under represented in Gibraltar, and it is not a critique, and I do think dance is an incredible art form, but there is a trend of encouraging young girls to dance.
How did the idea for this exhibition come about?
Louisa: The idea for the exhibition came from Cristiane Williamson-Fa. On the gallery’s opening night, she came up to us and said she had a great idea. She said there are so many excellent women artists in Gibraltar and she wanted to do something for International Women’s Day, and she came up with a list of about 30 names of female artists and the idea just rolled from there.
What has the response been from local artists?
Louisa: It’s been really good. We are having 40 artists and we’ve had more than 80 submissions, it has been incredible. We have a number of sculptures as well, and we’ll be running some audio-visuals on the night, but that’s a surprise for our guests. We are having to whittle them down, and it’s been very difficult, but it’s been such a high standard.
Sebastian: The gallery is so small as well, that we’ve had to really turn away some great works of arts because of a lack of space - it’s going to be very congested, but it shouldn’t be what holds us back. It’ll just be a feature of the gallery.
Do people need to buy tickets for the launch night?
Sebastian: It’s an open invite – everyone is invited. It’s a good thing because people will circulate, and Allan from Rock on the Rock is lending us the patio area, so there’ll be a bit of a cycle that’s formed that will have people passing through the gallery and then congregating outside.
This exhibition is being held to mark International Women’s Day, but will you have any other exhibitions held in the future?
Sebastian: We’re holding Leslie Gaduzo’s first solo exhibition at the moment, and that’s done really well for us.
Louisa: Face Frames was opened in December, so this has been quite a lot to organise, but I think we have a better idea of what we are doing and we’ve got some great ideas for future exhibitions.
Sebastian: In fact, one of the ideas for a future exhibition that we’re doing is going to be called Extra Curricular and it’s going to feature art work from teachers. They are really important and they meant a lot to me, they do so much to develop people’s art but often don’t have the platform or time to create, so I’m hoping this idea will bring them in.
So what can people expect to see in this exhibition?
Louisa: We have some fantastic female artists like Willa Vasquez, Tanya Stagnetto and Tiana and Jane Langdon, and we’ve had some brilliant works from them. We’re trying to show that there are some excellent female artists who are doing it as a professional job because they are incredibly successful.
Sebastian: What’s been really amazing about this exhibition is that we weren’t really sure about what the response would be like, but something I’ve particularly enjoyed is that new people who don’t usually create art work have done so specifically for this exhibition, and that’s been really cool. Another thing that has been really touching is that established artists have also put their work in, which is great.
From the works that you’ve received, what would you say is a common theme other than women created the art work?
Louisa: We didn’t set a theme deliberately, and even within the same artist we’ve seen such different submissions. The artists have tended to focus on more female-based work.
Sebastian: Although we didn’t set a theme, but in some cases we’ve noticed that the female artists have represented female strength or an icon they feel relates to them.
Some artists have submitted a number of pieces, so how are you selecting what goes up in the gallery and what is turned away?
Sebastian: With a number of artists, we’ve had to accept only one piece.
Louisa: We’ve had to go with the piece that really speaks to us, and either will go well in this space, or honestly, which we think will sell. We are not just basing our decisions on that, but we are a gallery and we do want the artist to sell and what we think will be most popular. It’s just been immediately obvious to both of us what we should choose, and it’s been a unanimous decision.
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